Owen Atkin

Abstract

My early years were spent in Kokoda in Papua New Guinea (where my dad was a teacher) – a place where one lived surrounded by forests and grasslands. From family albums, it is clear that we spent a lot of time playing barefoot outdoors, surrounded by, and immersed in lush tropical vegetation. On returning to Australia as a 6-year-old, I had to adjust to wearing shoes in an ordered, suburban landscape that lacked Kokoda's greenness. A yearning for green-dominated environments played a role in my interest in plants, along with: talking to my grandfather about what he was growing in his vegetable garden (and debating whether he really needed to chop down a tree that was shading his vegetables!); and, an uncle introducing me to the landscape wonders of bushwalking and back country cross-country skiing in Australia's high country. These experiences gave me a deep emotional appreciation for the role plants play in regulating ecosystem services and in defining the ‘human condition’. Then, in time, I became fascinated with the question of how plants survive where they do and what factors regulate their ability to grow and reproduce.

At the end of high school, I decided that I wanted to do a degree that involved plants. I chose forestry at the Australian National University. But, like many young university students living away from home for the first time, I found the transition difficult, both emotionally and academically. Lacking focus, I failed some key subjects in my first year, including Chemistry – a prerequisite for the forestry degree. The second year was not much better, but there was one subject that I was able to enjoy and eventually do well in – that being botany, particularly plant physiology. Finally, I had a framework through which I could start to understand what enabled plants to grow where they do and how changes in the environment alter rates of resource acquisition by roots and shoots. Designing and undertaking experiments in my second and third year, along with getting and interpreting the results, made me feel good. I then tested myself by doing an honors research project on the ecophysiology of alpine plant species. I was hooked and motivated to do a PhD on alpine or arctic plants in North America, eventually accepting an offer to work on high arctic plants at the University of Toronto, Canada. Plant science to see the world!

A constant throughout my career has been the joy of discovering what makes plants tick. For my PhD, that centred around understanding whether arctic plants – which grow on cold soils where the dominant source of inorganic nitrogen is ammonium – could use nitrate as a nitrogen source, and how nitrogen source influenced the carbon economy of arctic plants. Later, the focus widened to look at how temperature more broadly, both cold and hot, affected rates of carbon exchange in leaves. My fieldwork expanded to include sites that ranged from the high arctic to temperate forests, tropical rainforests, savannas, and deserts. Understanding the extent to which plants can adjust metabolic rates – particularly leaf respiration – to sustained changes in growth temperature became a key area of interest, as did helping to improve the representation of respiration temperature responses in dynamic vegetation and earth system models used to predict impact. Wanting to understand what drives changes in metabolic rates, I have tried to combine field observations with more reductionist, mechanistic work at the molecular, protein, and cellular level. Finally, in my last decade as an academic, I have done my best to combine discovery work with leadership roles through which I can help protect investment in plant science. One of the best ways to achieve this is by showing that knowledge of plant science can help address some of the most pressing global challenges facing human societies and the planet.

I have had some great mentors throughout my career who have helped guide my approach to being an academic. My best mentors are those who have been generous and inclusive in their relationships with others, and for whom the goal has been open collaboration where possible. As I have moved into leadership roles, my role models tend to be leaders who proactively and strategically plan for the future. My gold standard is Professor Jan Conroy, who used to be an academic leader at Western Sydney University, Australia. From what I know, Jan became an academic later in life than is typical, but that delay did not hold her back from coupling great work on C₄ metabolism with academic and strategic leadership at Western. She was pivotal in the establishment of the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment (HIE) at Western, always being ‘shovel ready’ with an infrastructure proposal for the next stage of HIE's development. This was handy, as HIE is located in a marginal electoral seat on the edge of Sydney – with Jan always being ready to provide a proposal to politicians in need of well thought through infrastructure investments.

My standout plant is Eucalyptus pauciflora (snowgum) (Fig. 1) – a mallee-forming tree that grows at high altitudes in south-eastern Australia. It is a wonderful example of how an evergreen tree species has adapted to the harsh conditions of Australia's mountain region. Its thick, tough leaves have to cope with severe blizzard conditions during which winds of > 120 km h⁻¹ – winds that contain ice crystals – occur. But with this toughness comes incredible beauty, particularly with the tree trunks exhibiting a palette of vibrant colours worthy of the Group of Seven artists in Canada.

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